{"id":48233,"date":"2026-01-23T01:54:36","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T09:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=48233"},"modified":"2026-01-21T15:21:41","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T23:21:41","slug":"guitar-virtuosos-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2026\/01\/23\/guitar-virtuosos-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Guitar virtuosos play"},"content":{"rendered":"

Itamar Erez performs with three other leading musicians on Feb. 1, 7:30 p.m., at Massey Theatre, as part of International Guitar Night. <\/i>(photo from itamarerez.com<\/a>)<\/i><\/p>\n

International Guitar Night takes place on Feb. 1 at Massey Theatre. Once again, Jewish community member Itamar Erez, whose styles range from Middle Eastern, to jazz improv, to world music, is taking part.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis unique project started with Brian Gore many years ago, when he had the vision to create these unique guitar tours. It\u2019s been going on for over 20 years, with some of the best guitarists in the world,\u201d Erez told the Independent<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea is to put four guitarists on stage with a totally different style and sound,\u201d he explained. \u201cEach plays a solo set and introduces the next player \u2013 and, eventually, all four guitarists are playing together in duets and quartets. The audience loves the variety in the music and personalities and, often, there are interesting and funny stories that go with the music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Erez will be joined by Jocelyn Gould, a traditional jazz player and singer, Caroline Plante, who comes from the flamenco tradition, and Jamie Dupuis, who brings his harp guitar and Roma jazz influences.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m playing my own mixture of Middle Eastern\/Brazilian sounds,\u201d said Erez, whose recent albums include Mi Alegria<\/i> (2019), May Song<\/i> (2022; for a review, go to jewishindependent.ca\/erezs-new-cd-shows-mastery<\/a>) and Migrant Voices<\/i> (2024, with Hamin Honari).<\/p>\n

\u201cMigrant Voices<\/em> was a unique album for me,\u201d Erez said. \u201cI had worked with Hamin for a few years already and we became really good friends. We worked on developing new material for the duet and, towards the recording date, we realized that this album will be mostly based on free improvisation. It just felt like the best approach and most authentic for us. Apart from the album title (Migrant Voices<\/em>), that was composed by myself, all the tunes were basically improvised right there at the studio.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2024,\u201d he continued, \u201cI also went to the studio with my piano trio (Jeff Gammon on bass and Kevin Romain, drums, and myself on piano) and we recorded in one afternoon a bunch of instrumental covers to tunes \u2013 this is something I never had done before, as I always was creating new original material. Among these tracks were Marina Maximilian\u2019s beautiful song \u2018Amok Batal,\u2019 three Hanukkah tunes (\u2018Maoz Tzur,\u2019 \u2018Banu Hoshech,\u2019 \u2018Kad Katan\u2019) and several other tunes, such as \u2018Blue Bossa\u2019 \u2026 all done with a very personal approach.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the past year, I have released these tunes slowly as singles \u2013 and was overwhelmed with the warm response of audiences for these tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n

International Guitar Night is a touring festival, which has three iterations: Canadian, American and European.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did one full tour many years ago, in 2009\/10, with many concerts in the US, Canada and Scotland,\u201d said Erez. \u201cI did the European version of the tour (Gitarren Nacht<\/i>) a few years ago, with shows in Germany, Austria and France, and one more time in BC quite recently (2023), where I played for the first time with Jocelyn Gould\u2026. My favourite part of these tours is making friendships with these musicians, some of them are friends for life. And making music with players that come from a totally different background is always fun and exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s Canadian tour centred on British Columbia, with stops in Oliver, Campbell River, Duncan, Nanaimo and Victoria. The Feb. 1 performance at the 1,260-seat Massey Theatre in New Westminster caps it off.\u00a0 <\/span>For tickets, go to masseytheatre.com\/event\/ign-2026<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Itamar Erez performs with three other leading musicians on Feb. 1, 7:30 p.m., at Massey Theatre, as part of International Guitar Night. (photo from itamarerez.com) International Guitar Night takes place on Feb. 1 at Massey Theatre. Once again, Jewish community member Itamar Erez, whose styles range from Middle Eastern, to jazz improv, to world music, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48234,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[788],"tags":[6422,22635,24572,4469,3607],"class_list":["post-48233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-british-columbia","tag-concerts","tag-international-guitar-night","tag-itamar-erez","tag-massey-theatre"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}